Your views in 200 words or less

Letter by Robert W. Muntz, Tacoma
on May 16, 2012 at 3:13 pm
with 22 Comments »

May 16, 2012 4:44 pm

It is surprising to me that The News Tribune would write an editorial on a subject that it obviously has not researched very well.

The editorial plays the old familiar blame game of the postal unions and their “uncommonly generous employee benefits.”

Never a mention of the Congress mandated requirement to pre-fund retiree health care for the next 75 years, and do it in 10 years, at a cost to the Postal Service of $5 billion a year. No other federal agency is required to do this. The inspector general’s office has stated that the overpayment into this fund amounts to over $50 billion.

As for Saturday delivery, what business would cut their service in order to remain alive? The Postal Service does not operate on tax payer money. It receives none. It operates on what its service and products generate.

The Postal Service is not in a death spiral yet, but failure to get rid of that onerous $5-million-every-year payment will certainly hurry the process along.

Those who look for the death of the Postal Service should be careful of what they wish for. If you think 45 cents is a lot to pay for a stamp, you will look back to that price as a real bargain if a private company takes over delivery of mail.

Great letter, I think the TNT really needs to answer to their one sided opinion article that totally ignores the facts. Congress created this mess in 2006 and if they had not the USPS would be operating in surplus now!

The post office is a shining example of government failure. This is not a jobs program, it’s a business and it is in a death sprial. Cuts would have been made if this was not an election year. You can debate that the post office has out lived it’s mission. We shut down NASA, why not make cuts in the USPS? Answer, postal unions own democrats.

truth – Can’t argue with the facts from the letter? Typical. If you want to bust the truth then please do so with something I can verify rather than hyperbolic talking points of the bubble. Otherwise all you are busting is a gut yelling at the clouds for infringing on your rights to sunshine.

truthy-guy, What specific “cuts” would YOU suggest for the USPS if this were NOT an election year?

If you knew anything about the USPS then you would know that there could be no cuts applied to it from the federal budget, because the USPS does NOT get any Tax Money to operate.

“The United States Postal Service (also known as USPS, the Post Office or U.S. Mail) is an independent agency of the United States government responsible for providing postal service in the United States. It is one of the few government agencies explicitly authorized by the United States Constitution.”

“The USPS is often mistaken for a government-owned corporation (e.g., Amtrak) because it operates much like a business, but as noted above, it is legally defined as an “independent establishment of the executive branch of the Government of the United States”, (39 U.S.C. § 201) as it is controlled by Presidential appointees and the Postmaster General. As a quasi-governmental agency, it has many special privileges, including sovereign immunity, eminent domain powers, powers to negotiate postal treaties with foreign nations, and an exclusive legal right to deliver first-class and third-class mail. Indeed, in 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a unanimous decision that the USPS was not a government-owned corporation, and therefore could not be sued under the Sherman Antitrust Act.[44]”

“The USPS has not directly received taxpayer-dollars since the early 1980s with the minor exception of subsidies for costs associated with the disabled and overseas voters.”

truthy-guy, why don’t you try studying-up on the next subject you want to comment on, BEFORE you make another ignorant comment like the one above. Just a suggestion.

Great letter. Not only does no other agency have to do this, no other private company has to do this and if they did they would be bankrupt in a year. The PO is self-sufficient and doing fine until they made it pay this stupid pre-funding. This was intentional to make it go under and hopefully privatize. Like you said, look out prices and poor service here we come and God help rural areas. This is pure BS by a group of republicans that rammed this through to help their buddies who want to privatize it and idiots that have no clue what would happen if that happened.

And for the last 2 years it has lost a ton of money before the pension plan payments. Lets talk facts here.

The business model is failing. Digital age is leading to less paper mail. There is still a need for postal service (taxes for example), but less and less every year. Something has to be done before the taxpayers get slammed with another huge bailout.

CT7; As usual you are fact challenged. The postal service is a requirement for much more than you think. It is not a business, it is a separate branch of the government. It was established and explicitly authorized by the United States Constitution in article one! It was established to ensure that information would be delivered to all areas of the country for a uniform cost no matter how remote. Try that with UPS!

How about voting in this state? Do you vote, if so you do it via the United States Postal Service… Would you want to trust UPS or FEDEX to not lose your ballot? I do not trust private companies, I have worked for them and I know how they operate.

How do you think that subscription magazines and news papers arrive in your mailbox?

This is a play by UPS and other large carriers to cripple the post office. The post office was making a profit recently until the unrealistic new funding mandates forced by the majority Rethuglicon party to fund the retirement for the postal service for employees that have not even been born yet. This is not how America is supposed to be. As usual the Republicans are out to destroy America.

Undermining the Postal Service is another means to undermine fair elections in our state. Voting by mail is incredible inexpensive for us, reducing a lot costs on on-site voting, and voting by mail is also secure in that is a long list of laws about interfering with the US Mail. Maybe that’s one of the reasons conservative want to kill the Postal Service.

Undermining a public service like the post office is just another means for the government haters to try the undermine the United States of America. Yes American are desperate to protect our country from the extreme right winger John Birchers who are buying out the Republican Party and attempting to purchase this country out right to hand over to the oligarchs, who want a fascist dictatorship that kowtows to the billionaires – exactly what Willard wants.

Come on people! Tone it down. Get back to reality. The Republicans are trying to crash the USPS so their rich buddies who own UPS, FedEx etc… can make more money, while Joe Sixpack gets screwed again!!! The Republicans are the Party of The Rich after all! This is their M.O.

concernedtacoma7 said, “Funny that you left wing nuts attack the Constitution for being out of date then quote it as justification for USPS.”

I’ve seen them disagree with the right “wing nuts” about the interpretation of Amendment 1 of the Bill of Rights in regards to “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” and Amendment 2 in regards to “…the right of the people to keep and bear Arms” – but I have not seen any of them say that The Constitution is “out of date”.

Are you saying that The Constitution is out of date because it mentions “Post Offices and Post roads”?

The Constitution may be amended from time to time as needed, but it will never be out of date?

Alindasue- this has been discussed before. Our favorite liberal SCOTUS justice told the Egyptians to look elsewhere for guidance, not the US Const. NYT has called it out of date. Do a quick google search. BHO has made some great comments himself.

I am aware that in this day of Twitter and text messaging acronyms and abbreviations are a current trend, but they tend to make written dialog difficult for those who may not be “in the loop” about the latest pop culture abbreviations. Personally, I don’t twitter and my text messages are written in plain English.

I finally figured out what “SCOTUS” and “POTUS” mean. I’m assuming that BHO refers to President Obama. What is “NYT” and why would it or they consider “it” (The Constitution?) out of date?

If “NYT” considers The Constitution is out of date, then I clearly disagree with it.

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